Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring 2.0 Beta 2 released

Microsoft has made available Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring 2.0 Beta 2, which now comes with better features thanks to feedback gathered from the first Beta. Microsoft now makes it easier than ever to empower users to support themselves as well as provide better reporting and simple provisioning.

“When we discuss protecting data from breaches I often hear that customers haven’t deployed, or have just partially deployed, drive encryption solutions within their organizations. Laptops are often prioritized within their plans, but desktops and servers are omitted in many, if not most cases. When I hear this there is always a temptation to be surprised, however, I’ve talked to enough people to understand that IT is increasing being asked to do more with less. This understanding drives many of the decisions that we make here at Microsoft and that thinking is clearly reflected in both Windows 8 and Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) which will enable you to deploy BitLocker more broadly while at the same time reducing overall costs to your organization,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.

The idea behind BitLocker Administration and Monitoring 2.0 is to:

Empowering users to support themselves with a self-service recovery portal (e.g. Lost PIN)

Integrating MBAM with the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 or 2012

Simplifying provisioning and eliminating common support scenarios

Helping IT better report on and enforce compliance

With MBAM 2.0, there is a new dashboard that provides organizational compliance status as well as information to help drive corrective actions. MBAM 2.0 also features integration within Configuration Manager, so reports can be viewed within the Configuration Manager Console. Those who need a BitLocker recovery key can easily do so by reseting their PIN using their own Self Service Portal.